Wednesday follow-ups

You may remember Janet Mello, a civilian employee at Fr. Sam at San Antonio who was accused of fraudulently scamming the military out of $109,000,000.

A Texas woman who pleaded guilty to charges of stealing nearly $109 million from a youth development program for children of military families and using it to fund an extravagant lifestyle that included multiple mansions, a fleet of luxury cars and designer accessories was sentenced Tuesday to 15 years in federal prison.

Janet Yamanaka Mello, 57, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez after pleading guilty in March to five counts of mail fraud and five counts of filing a false tax return.

Mello was a financial manager who handled funding for a youth program at the military base and determined whether grant money was available. She created a fraudulent group called Child Health and Youth Lifelong Development, prosecutors said.AP

They say crime doesn’t pay….looks to me like here it paid about $7,000,000 for every year in prison. I suspect it won’t be PMITA prison, either. (Photo totally unrelated)

And in a similar vein, Steve Kim, 63, is gonna be 66 when HE gets out of jail.

A federal judge has sentenced a California man for selling $3.5 million worth of counterfeit and substandard fan assemblies to the Department of Defense.

According to the Justice Department, Kim’s company sold fan assemblies to the DLA that were either counterfeit or misrepresented as new when, in fact, they were surplus.

Some of the fan assemblies were installed or were about to be installed with electrical components on a nuclear submarine, a laser system on an aircraft and a surface-to-air missile system.  UPI

Well, we can HOPE he goes to PMITA prison.

A while back we talked about MAJ Joshua Mast, a Marine who said he adopted an orphan Afghan girl despite her extended family trying to get her back. Things are not going well for him.

A Virginia appellate court ruled Tuesday that a U.S. Marine should never have been granted an adoption of an Afghan war orphan and voided the custody order he’s relied on to raise the girl for nearly three years. The decision marked a major turning point in a bitter custody battle that has international ramifications far greater than the fate of one child.

Mast and his wife, Stephanie, convinced the courts in his hometown, rural Fluvanna County, Virginia, to grant him an adoption of the child, even though she remained in Afghanistan as the government there tracked down her extended family and reunited her with them. The family fled Afghanistan with thousands of other evacuees when the Taliban took over in the summer of 2021. Once she arrived in the United States, Mast used the Fluvanna County documents to convince federal government officials to take the child from her Afghan relatives and give her to him.  AP deux

More than one commented here that this case didn’t seem to pass the smell test  here   https://valorguardians.com/blog/?p=139538  and   https://valorguardians.com/blog/?p=135616, This time it is the appeals court continuing to rule against him.  By now, it reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from a fella who went by W.C. Fields: “If at first you don’t succeed, give up. No sense in being a damn fool about it.”

OH NO! Not strictly a follow-up, but one of Oscar Mayer’s Wienermobiles overcorrected and rolled on its side after clipping a car in Illinois. Seems there are two sizes now, the Mini-based Minimobile  is what got wrecked.

No injuries were reported after the crash, which prompted the closure of the right lane of northbound I-294 for more than an hour, officials said.

A spokesperson for the Oscar Mayer brand, which has several Wienermobiles, told the Chicago Sun-Times it’s “grateful that everybody involved is safe and there were no injuries.” AP trois

I am guessing leaving the original fast steering in a vehicle as newly topheavy as what’s shown is not a great idea. Figured y’all would relish the opportunity to comment on it.

 

Category: "Teh Stoopid", Afghanistan, Crime, Marines